Category Archives: Office 365

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One of the longest standing requests of the community regarding Exchange features is the request to have the ability to share e-mail signatures between Outlook for desktop, Outlook Web Access (OWA) and mobile clients like Outlook for iOS. Several 3rd party vendors have been filling this gap with solutions with the possibility of adding standardized signatures on the transport layer or through application add-ins for the WYSIWYG approach.

The Outlook products don’t share signatures; Outlook Web Access does store the signature in a so-called Folder Associated Item (FAI) in the mailbox, making the signature persist when moving the mailbox around. But that unfortunately is only for Outlook Web Access; Outlook for desktop signatures are stored in files in one’s user profile, and Outlook for iOS only allows you to configure a single line, which often is used to apologize for any typos in the message, more common when using mobile devices, by setting it to ‘Mail sent using mobile’ or text of similar nature.

However, after a recent discussion with the relevant product groups by Jeff Guillet, the product groups challenged MVPs that there is indeed a significant demand for this feature by getting people to vote on UserVoice. Jeff with the MVPs designed a functional specification for this feature, which will be shared with the product groups at a later date. There is no reason why we can’t expect this feature to work for both Exchange Online as well as Exchange on-premises. Part of the request will also be to be able to manage the signature through PowerShell, similar to how the Outlook Web Access signature can now be managed using Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration.

So, power to the community and get your voice heard if you want this feature. You can vote on UserVoice here. Thank you.

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With the speed of development in Office 365, it is sometimes hard to track which changes have been made to your tenant. Of course, there is the roadmap and message board which you can use to keep up to date, but those are in general high level descriptions. Sometimes you may want to see what are the changes at the cmdlet level in your tenant, between tenants, or Azure Active Directory module. And there is also the occasional gem in the form of a yet undocumented cmdlet or parameter which could hint at upcoming features.

For this purpose I have created a simple script which has two purposes:

Export information on the current cmdlets available through Exchange Online or Azure Active Directory.

Compare two sets of exported information, and display changes in a readable way.

The script is in PowerShell (of course), and is called Compare-Cmdlets.ps1. To export information, you need to be already connected to either Exchange Online or Azure Active Directory (or both).

To export cmdlet information, use:

.\Compare-Cmdlets.ps1 –Export

For Exchange Online and Azure Active Directory, separate export files are created. The files are prefixed with a timestamp and postfixed with the Exchange Online build or Azure Active Directory module version, e.g. 201803121814-ExchangeOnline-15.20.548.21.xml or 201803121815-AzureAD-2.0.0.137.xml.

After a few days/week, or when connected to another tenant or using a new Azure Active Directory PowerShell module, run the export again. You will now have 2 sets of Exchange Online or Azure Active Directory cmdlets, which you can compare using the following sample syntax:

Episode 64 and last episode of The UC Architects podcast is now available. Contrary to the belief of some, people’s agendas rather than lack of contents made it more and more difficult to get sufficient people together for recording. Thanks for the great 5 year ride, people!

This episode is hosted by Pat Richard, who is joined by Tom Arbuthnot, Stale Hansen and John Cook. Editing was done by Andrew Price.

Topics discussed in this episode are:

5 years of The UC Architects podcast.

What made it fun, the friendships, the guests, the topics, and how social media has changed how info gets disseminated about Skype for Business, Exchange, Office 365, Teams, and more.

We talk about what the crew are up to these days, and their involvement/sessions at Ignite.

Skype for Business v.Next and Teams.

Some of the issues that arise when deploying Skype for Business when there is no Exchange in the org.

The upcoming Ignite and UCDay events.

You can download the podcast here or you can subscribe to the podcasts using iTunes, Zune or use the RSS feed.

About
The UC Architects is a community podcast by people with a passion for Unified Communications; our main focus is on Exchange, Skype for Business or related subjects.

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Last week the inaugural Office 365 Engage conference took place in the small but charming city of Haarlem, The Netherlands. With hotels for speakers and attendees close by, the event took place in the Philharmonie, a venue normally used for concerts and theater performances. This lead to some amazing shots on social media of sessions being held in “Room A” (the theater), “Room B” (with bar) and “Room E” (the concert hall).

“Room A”

With Tony Redmond being the chair for this non-Microsoft event, one of the few big Microsoft-technology related events remaining in Europe, organizer BWW Media Group managed to attract an amazing line-up of speakers. Amongst them were quite a number of Microsoft MVP’s, some like Paul Robichaux or Chris Goosen even flying in from overseas. Being sort of a home game to me, it was other speaker’s turn to having to cope with jetlag.

Sessions presented were on all things Office 365 related, such as Azure AD, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Groups and Teams, and also more dev-oriented sessions on things like the Graph API. Also, more generic topics were also put to the table, like the roadmap and coping with continuous development, GDPR or hybrid strategies.

“Room B”

On Monday, Jaap Wesselius and I held a full-day workshop on PowerShell for Office 365. The attendees were coming from all over Europe, which shows that there is a demand for an European event of this size on this topic. On Tuesday, I presented a session on Managing Exchange Online using PowerShell, Tips & Tricks. Pending feedback from evaluations, the workshop and session went very well. For those that attended our workshop on Monday, PowerShell for Office 365, or my session on Tuesday on Exchange Online and PowerShell Tips & Tricks, the slide decks will be made available later through the organizer. Sample code from the session is available from the TechNet Gallery here.

“Room E”

Finally, a big thank you to BWW’s Megan Keller, their CEO George Coll, and all the other staff as well, who made speakers and attendees feel welcome at this event, which was small and intimate, a different experience from more massive events like Microsoft Ignite. Also a big thank you to the folks of Quadro-Tech for sponsoring the post-conference drinks.

With everything being walking distance, and with pleasant summer weather, the after-conference hours for catching up with peers and attendees were very enjoyable. BWW was also so kind to offer us speakers a boat trip, where we could experience Haarlem from the waterside, including the obligatory snapshots of windmills, fields and cows.

Note that the organizer is still looking for feedback on the event. Share with them what you like or didn’t like, so they can improve next year’s conference. I am really looking forward to next year’s event, to be held in June 2018, and would highly recommend it to anyone. Hope to see you there next year!

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Note: Due to Microsoft putting Ignite 2016 contents on YouTube and a new portal, I had to rewrite the download script. Mattias Fors was also working on this, and after integrating his contents pointers, I present you Ignite2016Download.ps1. Check the description on Technet Gallery page for usage options.

Today, the Ignite 2016 event will kick off in Atlanta, US. The agenda contains the whopping number of 1412 sessions, of which 395 touch Office 365 and 133 Exchange in some way or another.

With those numbers it is impossible to attend every session for folks interested in these topics, but luckily Microsoft will also publish Ignite 2016 sessions on Channel 9 this year.

Some of the interesting sessions to watch out for are (links should resolve to on-demand sessions, as they become available):

For those that wish to view sessions offline, there is a script to download the slidedecks and videos. It does so by scraping the Ignite portal, downloading slidedecks from the portal itself, and videos from the related YouTube video link using an utility youtube-dl.exe (which you can also use to download playlists, quite neat). The script can take some parameters:

DownloadFolder to adjust the download folder.

Format to alter the dimensions and quality of the downloaded videos (see help for supported formats).

Title to filter on title keyword

Keyword to filter on description keyword.

Start to use a different version number to start scraping. Scraping is done sequentially; in the output you will notice a (#nnn) next to the title. That is the current post number.

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Episode 59 of The UC Architects podcast is now available. This episode is hosted by Steve Goodman, who is joined by Dave Stork and special guest, Gareth Gudger AKA Supertekboy. Editing was done by Andrew Price.

Topics discussed in this episode are:

Gareth Introduction

Help us test Exchange 2013/2016 to Exchange Online public folder migration

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A short notice on an update received today for Outlook for iOS 2.09. This update adds the much requested feature of integrating Outlook for iOS with the (native) Contacts in iOS:

“Your Office 365 and Exchange Contacts can now be saved to the iOS Contacts app. This will allow you to easily see the name of a contact when you receive a call or text message from them. Head to your Advanced Settings to turn on this feature.”

This does away with the requirement of resorting to setups like having the iOS Mail app sync with your Office 365 or Exchange On-Premises account, just to sync those contacts with your device. To disable syncing contacts through the Mail app, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and click the account you wish to disable syncing contacts for. Then, disable syncing its Contacts by toggling its switch:

You will get a warning contacts synced through this contact will be removed from Contacts, but since we are going to use Outlook for this, you can proceed.

Next, open up the updated new Outlook app, and go to Settings. Click the account from which you want to sync contacts to your device, and select Advanced Settings. In there, you will find a new switch, Save Contacts to Device. Behind it is the number of contacts available on this account:

Note that all synced contacts will contain a line in the Notes field, stating:

Exported from Microsoft Outlook (Do not delete) [outlook:..:..]

This is to indicate this is a synced contact, and you must not edit or remove it using the device, rather remove it from the originating source as it might get recreated or overwritten during synchronization.

Finally, the sync is one-way, so although you can edit properties on your phone through the Contacts app, they won’t be synced back to the originating source. Also, when editing properties through Contacts, those edits are not propagated to the People view in the Outlook app, as those are the contacts from your Office 365 / Exchange On-Premises accounts. This can be confusing, but having to set up an e-mail account just once with a one-way sync seems more efficient and less confusing to me than having to configure the Mail app only to get your contacts on your phone.

Like most people I still use RSS feeds to keep track of news and updates from various sources. But did you know you can also keep track of Microsoft’s knowledgebase articles per product using RSS feeds? Great for keeping track of updates in RSS readers like Outlook or sites like Feedly, or creating triggers on sites like IFTTT (If-This-Then-That) to automatically send e-mail notifications.

Here are some RSS feeds on knowledgebase articles that might be of interest to you:

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Note: For those that attended Jaap and my workshop on Monday, Managing Exchange On-Premises and Exchange Online using PowerShell, the slidedeck is available here and the sample code is available here.

Last weekend, I returned from one of the largest, independent conferences on Microsoft technologies, IT/DEV Connections. The conference, which took place in the city of Las Vegas, is spread over a 3-day period on popular topics, like Exchange, Windows, SQL or SharePoint, and has a track for Infrastructure as well as Development (hence the ‘IT/DEV’). Apart from the many speakers, most of them experienced Microsoft Valuable Professionals, Microsoft celebrities like Tim McMichael were also presenting sessions.

Like many conferences nowadays, IT/DEV Connections took off with several pre-conference workshops on Monday. One of these workshops was done by fellow Exchange MVP and countryman Jaap Wesselius and myself. We talked a whole day about ‘Managing Exchange On-Premises and Exchange Online using PowerShell’. The turn-up was above expectation, which is always nice, and we had good interaction with, and feedback from the audience. This made our session, from a presenter’s viewpoint, very worthwhile.

Since I had no sessions after the workshop, I was free to attend sessions by fellow presenters. Tony Redmond kicked off with a keynote, analyzing the current landscape for Exchange and Office 365, and making references to sessions later that week, should people be interested in those topics. It’s also where you learn who is running what, and as it turned out most attendees are running Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2013 On-Premises, but with an increasing interest in Office 365.

During the week, apart from the excellent contents presented, I was very humbled to learn lots of presenters made references to several of my scripts, e.g.

This conference is also the place where Exchange MVP fellows Tony Redmond, Michael van Horenbeeck, Paul Cunningham and Jeff Guillet presented their 2nd edition of their book, ‘Office 365 for Exchange Professionals’. Congratulations to them reaching this milestone, looking at the non-stop amount of changes happening in the Office 365 environment. You can get your own copy of the updated book here.

It’s becoming a tradition that the last Exchange session of the conference is a ‘Ask the Experts’ panel session, where the audience can ask a panel of presenters questions, or where the current landscape for Exchange or Office 365 can be discussed. It’s a great way to close the conference, before everyone gets back to their corners of the world, back from the crazy city that is Las Vegas to reality.

If you didn’t consider IT/DEV Connections before, you should. The conference is a must-visit, especially with Microsoft having consolidated MEC, MMS etc. in a single, huge event which is Ignite now. Connections is not small, but the more intimate setting allows you to catch up with peers more easily, have discussions over a pint, great catering, and without the need to max out your step counter. The Aria resort is very nice place to host this event, great for business with a pleasant conference area without too much of the distractions like the other hotels. If you plan on visiting next year, save the date: September 19-22, 2016!

I also want to thank ENow for again hosting an epic Scheduled Maintenance party. Location this time was the Ghostbar at the 55th floor in Palms Resort, which gave an amazing view over the city of Las Vegas and the Strip. I wore my ENow-branded NFL jersey to the party, a gift from ENow last year. This lead to funny moments, as this is ENow’s event gear, and many people mistook me for an employee, thanking me when leaving the party.

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About Michel de Rooij

Michel is an Office Servers and Services MVP with a PowerShell affection, and publisher of EighTwOne. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google+. Use the Contact form for questions, consulting, support or other engagements.